Children across the country dream of lifting the Sam Maguire, but this little Kerry man ended up inside it – and all for a very good cause. Tralee-based Maureen O’Mahony painted the scene, which is probably now her most famous piece, for a motor neuron disease (MND) fundraiser, something very close to her heart.

“My brother-in-law was very sick with MND. There is also a neighbour of ours, their father and husband had died from it. They were doing a fundraiser and I just rang them and said: ‘I want to offer you a painting,” explains the artist.

“Then I went away and I said: ‘What will I actually paint?’ They were going to auction the painting, so I wanted something that would attract attention and that would raise a lot of money for them. I just started painting a child with a Kerry jersey on in the Sam Maguire. I donated the painting and Kerry GAA bought it.”

Before settling in the Kingdom, Maureen lived in a number of other GAA strongholds – Tipperary, Cork, Kilkenny and Dublin – so it is no wonder GAA is a prominent theme in her work and that she gets many GAA-inspired commissions.

The subjects of Maureen’s paintings are nearly always children, who represent the rivalry between teams perfectly. For example, a child in a Dublin jersey and a child in a Mayo jersey pulling the Sam Maguire between them.

Maureen paints in a traditional representational style and covers a wide variety of themes, not just GAA. Although she was always into photography and colour, she only started painting 15 years ago: “I took some classes locally and the lady then stopped teaching. That was acrylic paint. I changed to oil paint and I just kept on painting,” she says.

“Someone asked me would I do a painting of a cat for their sister up in Sligo, a little cat on a windowsill. So I did and I just started getting commissions from there, it evolved from that.”

As an artist, Maureen’s aim is to capture a moment in time, depicting people as they are naturally: “Most of my work is paintings of children and what I have tried to do is capture them in a moment in time.

“Nothing formal, not dressed up in front of the camera in their nice little Sunday clothes – maybe a pair of wellies, one shoe on, one shoe off, that kind of thing. Hair brushed, hair not brushed, just capturing them as they are, to get the essence of the child.” CL

For more information on Maureen’s work, see www.maureenomahony.com.